


Spirit of Place

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: 11Foot8 Bridge (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Gen, Genius Loci, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: It wasn't built in the shadow of any vast mountain or cliff or building; it doesn't run alongside a river; it isn't big enough or wide enough to harbor dank passages of its own.  It does its work in broad daylight.  That isn't an accident.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 50
Collections: Juletide 2020





	Spirit of Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



> I had a good time visiting [11foot8.com](http://11foot8.com/) as 'research' for this. Hope you enjoy! :)

Spirits of place have existed for as long as there have been places to have spirits: locations teeming with life of all kinds, busily dispersing energy into the world. Energy tends to collect, and collected long enough in one place – it shouldn't be a surprise when it develops into a kind of life all its own.

Some of these places are easy for even the most nuance-blind human to spot. A graveyard after dark, when the gate in its walls stands open and a chill breeze rustles the grass growing between the stones. A house falling into decay, set back among overgrown trees, windows gaping wide where they're not boarded up. A majestic natural feature, like a unique rock formation, colorful hot spring, or a wizened, ancient tree, happened upon on a sun-bright day. A moldering earthwork abutting an ancient battlefield. There's something _there_ that's almost impossible for a visitor to ignore.

Old tales, and older cultures, are full of them: nature spirits, landvættir, kami, genius loci, and other names too numerous to list. In the green days, in the time before road and rail and electric light, before frontier and plantation and town, the land that was not yet America knew and honored them, too.

Modern Western culture does not make much room for such things, though: taming and surrounding them, bounding them in iron, paving over the greenery that fed them, replacing with ignorance and dismissal the respect that was once their due.

Or, perhaps, respecting them _too_ much? Deliberately rationalizing them away, until they lurk only in the shadows at the corners of the eye, the hair that stands up on the back of a trespasser's neck when a building is too long empty, or in the pockets of nature left like islands to subsist as they might on tourists' uplifted emotions.

But sometimes... sometimes, one still finds room to adapt and grow.

Structure number 000000000630068 in Durham, North Carolina, once had another name. It doesn't remember that name; barely even remembers the great fields that came between the ancient trading paths and the new, iron routes that were laid right atop its home. It's now properly the Norfolk Southern-Gregson Street Overpass, but the name it knows best – the Name that accrues energy with every like on YouTube, every news article shared, every fresh crash, and every attempt to 'fix' its problems – is something a little more prosaic: The Can Opener.

It wasn't built in the shadow of any vast mountain or cliff or building; it doesn't run alongside a river; it isn't big enough or wide enough to harbor dank passages of its own. It does its work in broad daylight.

That isn't an accident. There are a lot of other crossings along the iron route that parallels its spine. Some of them were old friends. And those with ominous death counts, the ones that spook their prey – construction vehicles come, and they go quiet. Better, much better, to hide in plain sight.

+

_The sun shines down from a clear autumn morning sky; a pedestrian obliviously walks under the crash beam, the strongest tooth in its maw; the sign posted helpfully nearby blinks its warning: OVERHEIGHT, MUST TURN. A tall semi-trailer fails to slow. The driver sees the sign – **must** see the sign – but a voice whispers quietly in his thoughts: Oh, it probably warns for anything within a foot of the span. I'm sure **I'm** fine._

_Metal groans; the crash beam acquires a few new marks. At the back of the truck, a long curl of crushed metal droops toward the ground. At the front of the truck, nothing moves; the vehicle has wedged itself in place. More equipment, more people, must be summoned to remove it._

_The 11-foot-8-inch bridge shudders at the delicious shock of kinetic energy, samples the emotionally energetic dismay of the humans.... and diverts a trickle of that incoming vigor into strengthening its siren call, just a little more._

+

Studies have been done; other bridges with low clearances nearby have been recommended replacement; video cameras have been installed; more obvious signage has been emplaced; the fate of other such trucks reported in the news. But The Can Opener is cleverer than that. Positive notoriety only augments its reach and makes it even easier to snag its prey.

+

_Surely the rental company's GPS wouldn't send me this way if the bridge was too short for its trucks._

_I've fit under short bridges before; I'm more worried about the pedestrians crossing the other way._

_I know my truck will fit; I've been this way before. Surely my cargo's not piled **that** high...._

+

_On a sunny autumn day, a truck passes under; but on its trailer, a piece of construction equipment, its arm curled up for storage, smacks its topmost joint against the trestle. Debris flies – not all of it from the excavator. This one bit back; but in the end, the bridge is still triumphant._

+

When the entity that claims its land under their domain finally stirs enough to order a change... all they do, in the end, is lift it another few inches. Lowering the grade wouldn't work; it floods in rainstorms as it is. And any more clearance would, after all, affect the grades of nearby crossings.

+

_On a cloudier afternoon, twenty-two sun cycles after the adjustment, another tall semi-trailer ignores the obvious warnings. It takes a little more effort, now, to draw tall enough visitors; this one barely drags a corner of its roof against The Can Opener's palate. But a bright, silvery ring of noise accompanies another trickle into its reserves, and a shining sliver of metal pings off the ground._

_The 11-foot-8-plus-8-inch bridge is still in business._

+

It had been seventy-nine years since it had last changed incarnations; it's taken it a long time to grow. Maybe it'll grow further one day; maybe it'll change into something new.

But it knows the taste of human obliviousness and transportation technology, now.

Whatever happens, more food _will_ come. It knows.


End file.
